Vixen 03 (Dirk Pitt 5)

1

CLIVE CUSSLER – VIXEN

Buckley Field, Colorado

January 1954

The Boeing C-97 Stratocruiser bore the look of a crypt. Perhaps the image was bred by the cold winter night, or perhaps it came from the gusting snow that was piling an icy shroud on the wings and fuselage. The flickering lights from the cockpit windshield and the fleeting shadows of the maintenance crew served only to exaggerate the chilling scene.

Major Raymond Vylander, United States Air Force, did not care for what he saw. He watched silently as the fuel truck drove away and vanished into the stormy darkness. The loading ramp was dropped from the rear of the great whalelike belly, and then the cargo doors slowly swung closed, cutting off a rectangle of light that spilled onto a heavy-duty forklift. He shifted his gaze slightly and stared at the twin rows of white lights bordering the eleven-thousand-foot Buckley Naval Air Station runway that stretched across the plains of Colorado. Their ghostly luminescence marched into the night and gradually faded behind the curtain of falling snow.

He refocused his eyes and studied the weary face reflected in the windowpane. His cap was pushed carelessly back, revealing a dense thicket of umber hair. His shoulders were hunched forward and he wore the taut look of a hundred-meters runner poised for the starter's gun. His transparent reflection, bleeding through the glass into that of the aircraft in the background, caused him to shiver involuntarily. He closed his eyes, pushed the scene into the far reaches of his mind, and refaced the room.

Admiral Walter Bass, who sat on the edge of a desk, neatly folded a meteorological chart, then patted his sweating forehead with a handkerchief and nodded at Vylander.

"The weather front is moving off the eastern slope of the Rockies. You should break out of the overcast somewhere over the Continental Di-vide."

"Providing I can get that big-assed bird off the ground."

"You'll do it."

"Lifting a heavy plane with a full fuel load and a cargo weighing seventy thousand pounds in the middle of a blizzard with a thirty-knot crosswind from a ground altitude of five thousand feet isn't exactly a garden-variety takeoff."

"Every factor has been carefully considered," Bass said coldly. "Your wheels should leave the earth with a margin of three thousand feet of runway to spare."

Vylander dropped into a chair like a deflated balloon. "Is it worth risking the necks of my crew, Admiral? Just what is so damned vital to the U.S. Navy that it has to drag an Air Force plane out in the middle of nowhere in the dead of night to haul some junk to an island in the Pacific Ocean?"

For a moment Bass's face flushed, and then it softened. When he spoke, it was gently, almost apologetically. "It's painfully simple, Major. That junk, as you call it, is a top-priority cargo destined for a highly classified test program. Since your Stratocruiser was the only heavy transport within a thousand miles that can do the job, the Air Force consented to put her on temporary loan to the Navy. They threw you and your crew into the bargain, and that's all there is to it."

Vylander shot Bass a penetrating stare. "I don't mean to sound insubordinate, Admiral, but that's not all, not by a long shot."

Bass walked around the desk and sat down. "You're to consider it a routine flight, nothing more."

"I'd appreciate it, sir, if you'd throw me a bone and enlighten me as to what's inside those canisters in my cargo cabin."

Bass avoided his eyes. "Sorry, it's highly classified material."

Vylander knew when he was licked. He swayed wearily to his feet, picked up the vinyl folder containing his flight plan and charts, and walked toward the door. Then he hesitated and turned. "In the event we have to ditch-"

"Don't! If an in-flight emergency develops," Bass said solemnly, "you ride her down into a nonpopulated area."

"That's asking too much."

"I'm not making a formal request; I'm giving an order! You and your crew are not to abandon the aircraft between here and your destination, regardless of how dire the circumstances."

Vylander's face clouded. "Then I guess that's it."

"There is one more thing."

"Which is?"

"Good luck," Bass said, his lips edging into a tight grin.

It was a grin Vylander didn't like, not one tiny bit. He pulled open the door and, without replying, walked out into the cold.

In the control cabin, slouched so far down that the back of his head rested a good foot below his headrest, Lieutenant Sam Gold, Vylander's copilot, preoccupied himself with a flight checklist while, behind him, off to his left, Captain George Hoffman, the crew's navigator, fiddled with a plastic protractor. Neither man paid the slightest acknowledg-ment to Vylander as he stepped through the bulkhead door leading from the cargo cabin.

"Course plotted?" Vylander inquired of Hoffman.